George Tooker is an American painter born in
Brooklyn in 1920, and currently residing on
Long Island. He first studied
English literature at
Harvard University, before changing to study
art at the
Art Students League in
New York. As a youth he was also involved in a few socialist organisations, although he also unsuccessfully attempted to enlist as a
marine in
World War Two.
George Tooker is best known for his magic realist paitings, where grim everyday scenes of reality are infused with sinister, surrealist overtones, reflecting the unease that alienation, spiritual poverty and fear that came with urban life in the Cold War era. The belly of America's underclass come out in George Tookers' works as deindividualised, shapeless figures with weary or anxious faces, painted in dull primary colours. They uncomfortably inhabit nightmarishly claustophobic worlds of repeated elements and unusually distant vanishing points.
Some of George Tooker's most famous works include The Subway, Government Bureau, The Waiting Room, Landscape with Figures, Corporate Decision, and recently, Terminal. Most of his best works were executed with egg tempera.